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Some of us above the Equator almost always hardly pay attention to the Pacific politics in the South Pacific region, thus I couldn't be sure whether it has to do with our closer ties with the United States or just that our media rarely cover or promote politics below the Equator. At any rate, I'd like to complement your views as expressed above and in addition question the issue of Fiji being once considered as a militant country due the coup few years back. Has it being relieved yet of the political rhetoric labeling which to me is part chaotic since Fiji has been served as a very contributive country in the Pacific. Also, Fiji is offering solution to the sinking Kiribati and perhaps other low lying Pacific countries. Yes, our FSM country and state of Pohnpei have just wrapped their election last year and hopefully we should be ready to launch our new administrations with strategic development goals which may addressed the three major areas in agriculture, tourism and fisheries, plus of course our anticipated termination of financial assistance in our Compact of Free Association with the USA in 2023. We once had the case of impeachment in Pohnpei, but fortunately the official in effect has resigned and thus giving our current and soon to become new administration all the political and economic leverages to push forth. Again, thank you for sharing your views above.

. . . "Further to the big global agreements of 2015 – the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change – this year will see the beginning of the huge tasks associated with the implementation of these agreements." Huge tasks, indeed. Translating global rhetoric into local realities, however, demands an almost equally huge investment, long, long over-due, in participatory mechanisms, starting with informing citizens. From the perspective of PFF, the Pacific Freedom Forum, that requires member governments to recognise the centrality of news media, especially in the delivery of our most fundamental human right, freedoms of expression, and, more especially these days with the open data revolution, access to information. We outline those centralities in our 2015 end of year review, and look ahead for 2016 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/pacific-freedom-forum/hapi-nu-nius-hapi-nu-yia/1104916866215178" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Completely separate from my role as PFF editor, is my own project as founder of JA2025, the Journalism Agenda 2025. JA2025 envisions an adaptation of #globalgoals under SDGs towards the 4th Estate. This would see 0.7% of all aid targets firewalled off into independent trusts for a global 4th Estate, over the next decade. Concurrently, JA2025 will campaign for that same formula to be applied throughout the public sector by NGOs, and, eventually, the private sector, as well. Still in the blue-sky-pie stage, or pre-alpha-draft-exploratory-concept-phase to use the jargon, JA2025 is already been followed globally by leading United Nations development experts. Those interested can get an overview of JA2025 at our participatory forum <a href="https://www.loomio.org/g/OD0dFCNI/journalismagenda" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Meantime, one comment on the above, relating to there being "some way to go before universal suffrage is achieved" within Samoa. As something of a ground breaker for the English-speaking parts of the Pacific (French territories already well ahead on this path), Samoa is treading carefully, wisely in my view. Such is the power of corruption, even the best intentioned initiatives, such as gender equality, can be subverted to interests other than those of the public general. Outside of this aspect, the matai system is an ancient form of democracy that needs to be seen as an enabler rather an obstacle to equality. Primarily, by serving as an almost impregnable barrier that has acted as an efficient block to exploitation by foreign sources, and their hand-picked lackeys, including some well-known rugby players, among others. In the matai, and other traditional leadership systems across the region, we have a form of chaos-theory guardianship that slows things down. Having seen what has happened at home in my adoptive Cook Islands, where traditional leadership is extremely weak, and tourism wipe out indigenous language use in little over a generation, I think other countries are wise to go slow, for development to be socially and environmentally sustainable, as well as economically sustained. Sorry for these long wordy sentences, just some off-the-cuff comments in response to another excellent overview from Tess, via DevPolicy. Super valuable for us all. . . .

Very useful and informative post, thank you.

Great insight, the Roman Empire was the greatest human administration the world had ever seen. Roman legislation was so effective that it is still the basis of the legal code of many countries. Despite Rome’s achievements, however, her legions were unable to conquer one insidious enemy: corruption. Finally, corruption hastened Rome’s downfall.

Thank you John, some very useful insights into one of the pressing issues - informal sector. The National Goals and Directive Principles envisaged a promising country. Many argued it was too idealistic at the time of its proposal but later reflections, one would argue, suggest otherwise. The onus continues to be on the implementers, including the judiciary. Bal

I think this is a very important piece of work. Of course I am particularly interested because I am President of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, but it is interesting beyond that particular focus. First, it raises some important financing questions which I look forward to discussing at the Conference. But it also raises the cost effectiveness of prevention of disability, whether it is blindness or other forms of disability. This should not be seen as in competition with the fundamental issue of advancing the interests of people with disability in developing countries. This is a false dichotomy. They should be seen as two sides of the same coin.

Hi Patrick, We decided to operate on a 10 year time series as that's about as far back as a lot of NGOs publish their annual reports online. While it may be possible to get overall revenue figures from ACFID there's no escaping the need to access every individual NGO annual report for the expenditure side of the equation, and unfortunately the data just isn't readily available beyond 10 years. Picking the 'right' baseline may also be arbitrary if fundraising costs are indeed cyclical, but I think the stats Garth highlights below from the Asian tsunami onwards still illustrate an interesting, and somewhat worrying, trend. Regards, Jonathan

We need to ‘reframe’ cost of fundraising (and administration). In annual reports we can say something like: ‘Of your $1 donation, 20% goes to ensuring the long term future of by being used to raise another dollar, 5% goes on recruiting and training the right people to help, 5% goes on costs to ensure we are legal, have the right software, efficient computer systems, licences, secure databases to protect your information, and transparency. Finally, around 4% goes on quality control and measuring the impact of your dollar. We can do much more good with 66c in the dollar when it is spent wisely than 99c with ineffective support systems.’ Generally, worrying about cost of fundraising is distracting and although people say they worry about it, donors rarely have an idea of the cost of fundraising of their favourite charities. Try <a href="http://www.seantriner.com/2008/10/cost-effectiveness-could-be-end-of-your.html" rel="nofollow">this old exercise</a> on your board or SMT.

I agree with Garth. The biggest cost of fundraising is donor acquisition and a disaster is the lowest cost donor acquisition (sorry for sounding callous). This report has chosen some interesting base years. 2002 and 2007 both at fundraising peaks and low donor acquisition costs, the latter due to the tsunami. A better idea would be to go back another 10 or 20 years. Most of the data needed is in ACFID annual reports. I looked back 50 years but not cost of fundraising which is a very cyclical figure and as such hard to draw patterns (or conclusions) from

Hi Garth, Obviously I don't know for certain, but that seems like a very plausible explanation to me. cheers Terence

If you look at the graph on page 3 in my book 'NGOs and Political Change' the current fundraising levels are back to the long term trend as % of GDP (.02-.03%) and a little up on the 1990s fundraising in constant dollars so it is not all doom and gloom. A 2% real growth in fundraising is also not a shabby result in the long term (glass half full or half empty dicussion). These things depend on which year is chosen as the base year. The early 2000s even pre the tsunami were a growth time in NGO work, probably in response (by the public) to the harsh cuts of the Howard government. It is disasters that have given a boost to fundraising, which has a follow-on effect for a few years. The tsunami follow on went for a little longer maybe six or seven years. The other issue I take issues with is to have public education and advocacy as an expense. It is a legitimate NGO development activity (which dates back to the 1960s when the UN and the likes of Sir John Crawford encouraged it), and it is accepted as such by government through its recognised development expenditure (RDE) calculation, which in turn determines the subsidy amount in the ANCP. While the small group of public choice theorists in the IPA see it as fundraising ploy, most people in the international development do not. From the report there has been a 50% increase in public education (which was not separated out for some reason) which to me is a good thing, and might be a first step back to the glory days of development education and the consequent public support for aid of the 1970s. Six per cent is very low for development/global/public education and in the past here have been policies among some NGOs that it be much higher. Ashlee mail-outs occur because they work. Most NGO donors are of the pre-digital revolution generation and generosity increases with age. They would be fools to give up on mail-out and they generally are not fools. Those that do (reduce mail-outs) quickly re-instate them. Most NGOs have an strong on-line presence but that is for building a supporter base and advocacy and less for fundraising, but all do have online fundraising it just does not deliver heaps.

This book has been nominated for 'The People's Book' prize and you can support it by voting for it <a href="http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/book.php?id=1352" rel="nofollow">here</a>.